


Always Daisy, sometimes Skye

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, First Kiss, Fluff, Future Fic, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-09
Updated: 2016-04-09
Packaged: 2018-06-01 04:54:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6501541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She's barely recovered and they have to say goodbye again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Always Daisy, sometimes Skye

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Skyepilot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skyepilot/gifts).



She’s barely recovered when she has to go on another high-stakes crazy mission to defy the odds that say the enemy is so much more powerful. Her fractured ribs still make it impossible to throw a punch or breathe without some measure of pain. Her face hurts when she talks or frowns and that’s like 90% of what she does. She’s hasn’t completely recovered, but right now there’s no time for that.

Coulson walks with her to the Quinjet and the image is familiar. Not in a creepy someone-will-get-killed way. It’s almost comforting. That’s what they do. She goes to face danger, he says goodbye like he can’t bear to let her leave without showing how much she means to him. Like he’s issuing a warning, almost: you’re not allowed to _not come back_. 

“I’ll see you in a couple of days,” he says looking at his tablet with the mission report, and looking at the floor as well. “I guess.”

Daisy finds it bizarre that she’s come to see Coulson’s worrying about her safety as a normal occurrence in her life. She spent much of her youth aware that no one would care if she lived or died and now… this?

“Are you going to call me _Skye_ again?” she asks him, in a playful tone.

Coulson’s face fall in a way she finds almost endearing, full of embarrassment.

“I’m so sorry,” he says, and means it. “I didn’t intend to-”

Daisy touches his arm. “I know you didn’t.”

“Daisy,” he says, like he is trying to force himself to remember. “ _Daisy_.”

She likes how that sounds when tinged with the fear he’s feeling, almost reverential. Like he can’t let go of her name because he can’t let go of her.

“And I know _why_ you do it,” Daisy confesses, thinking back on that castle in England and how he was calling her by the wrong name over and over when she had passed out.

“You do?” he asks, like he himself doesn’t know it, and with a little movement of his hips, like he’s _challenging_ her to explain.

She thinks back further, though. To the day they witnessed the execution - because that’s what it was - of Thomas Nash.

“I think when you think I’m in danger, you go back to that place,” she tells him. “You go back to that cellar in Quinn’s villa and I’m there bleeding on the floor and I’m always _Skye_.”

Coulson goes pale, complete bullseye. She feels a bit bad about it.

“Hey, it’s okay, I’m fine now.”

Coulson pushes his shoulders back, studying Daisy’s face like she’s something offensive.

“ _You’re fine_? You have three fractured ribs and…” he lifts his hand, touching the cut on her cheek.

She leans into it, closing the gap between them herself, in case Coulson is not able to move that one last inch. His hand is warm but it feels cool, soothing, against her wounds.

“Coulson…” she says, stern, covering his hand with hers. She wishes she wasn’t wearing the gauntlets and could feel his knuckles pressed against her bare palm.

She watches his eyelids become heavy, a long slow blink like he can’t look at her for a moment. Then he does and his face is horrible. It’s bizarre, Daisy thinks, that she understands this as a fixture of her life now: that there is someone out there for whom losing her is the worst possible thing that could happen. She understood this a long time ago and it wasn’t even shocking. Maybe because Coulson is the only person who doesn’t make Daisy feel like she doesn’t deserve it. Maybe because she feels the same.

She lets go and gives his shoulder a friendly punch (really? a friendly punch? what is wrong with her? is she some jittery teenager dealing with a crush? she might be, actually).

“Hey,” she calls, until Coulson holds her gaze again.

“You should probably go,” he says, giving her back the tablet.

Sometimes she is still that Skye trapped in that cold wine cellar, dying. But that Skye was brave and strong, and so is this Daisy. Coulson has nothing to worry about (but it means something that he does).

“I’ll tell you what,” Daisy says. “If I promise I’ll never bleed to death in your arms again, will you promise to start seeing me differently? To let go of _Skye_.”

It’s a gamble but hey, she might die today.

“Differently?” 

Daisy smirks like she owns the whole world and grabs Coulson’s jacket, pressing her mouth to his. He holds his breath, eyes open. She gives him a little sweet and chaste kiss. Like the one you’d give your first boyfriend. In a sense she guesses that’s how Coulson will always feel to her. A first.

He pulls back, looking at her with this incredulous little frown.

“I thought…”

Coulson stops himself before the words make it out, you can see the moment it happens, when he decides it’s none of his business. He’s thinking about Lincoln and Daisy admits that particular conversation wasn’t fun, and she was probably being selfish there, but when she was there in that room looking at the one-way mirror and Coulson and she understood he was meant to be there to save her, they were meant to do this together, a weight was lifted. 

“See you in a couple of days, sir,” she tells him, ready to turn her back to him.

He grabs her arm and stops her. Deja vu but not quite. Though Fitz would say time doesn’t exist so what’s the difference? She thinks there’s a difference right now, in the way Coulson is looking at her, the way his fingers press into the hollow of her elbow. 

“Come home safe, _Daisy_ ,” he says, his voice soft and his eyes only a bit scared. “Come home to me.”

He yanks her gently until she stumbles forward and their mouths are smashed together. It’s nothing like her kiss. He closes his eyes now, and so does she. They have always been so awkward around each other… how come this is not? He pushes his tongue inside and Daisy is the one who has to hold her breath, and it only hurts a bit where Malick broke her ribs. Coulson is not smiling, not like her. This is serious, definitely not chaste. Definitely not _new_. When Daisy closes her eyes she still sees it, the way he saved her life, the broken mirror, how he had to be there, that was the plan all along, like the universe was telling her they shouldn’t be apart.

And now Coulson has to be the one to let go, to peel her away from his body, because Daisy wouldn’t have.

She stumbles back to her original position, her legs having gone numb.

“Yeah, okay, yeah,” she mutters, patting Coulson’s chest for some reason. She smiles at him. “Now I’m the one who’s forgotten your name.”

Her face also hurts when she smiles, apparently. Which is a problem, because she can’t stop.

“Daisy,” he says. “ _Skye_.”

He’s not letting _her_ go, either. He wants all of it, everything she is.

He’s serious again.

Daisy nods.

“Yeah, they’ll both come back.”

_To you_ , but that’s more than implied.


End file.
